I Know Your Secret. Let's Discuss My Price.

I should probably feel at least slightly guilty sitting here eating birthday cake for breakfast.  But I don’t.  Everyone should be able to, at least once in their lives, eat something that makes them feel good without the slightest inkling of guilt.  You wish you had cake.

It was a good birthday.  Nothing spectacular, out-of-this-world, I’ll-never-forget-this-in-a-million-years…but I can say that nothing bad happened.  No bill collectors called me.  LEH2 didn’t send a passive aggressive email to twist the knife deeper into my back.  No one died.  The universe did not choose to point its finger at me.  I don’t get many of those days anymore.

I DID however, get a yummy steak from Longhorn and some gourmet cupcakes from mom, and a surprise from my hetero lifemate, who snuck into my apartment and decorated it with streamers and tinsel.  Because one can never underestimate the power of some good tinsel.  Everyone should also have a hetero lifemate as wonderful as mine.

(snicker)

So, in the spirit of having a wonderfully uneventful, with the exception of surprise tinsel and cake, I have a story for you.  Happened last week.

Do you know how hard it can be to fall asleep when you’re the only adult in the house?  Some of you do.  Maybe most of you do.  Maybe it has nothing to do with being the only adult, and every single one of you know how hard it is to fall asleep at night.  Seriously, I feel like I’m 5 years old again.  I’m afraid if I go to sleep, I might miss something.  It could just be that I’m trying to revert back to my old blogging days when I WAS awake all night, writing, and there was so much food for blogs and inspiration that I couldn’t get it all down in one night.

So I was awake last Friday (Saturday) at 3am.  Just in case you weren’t aware, nothing good ever happens at 3am.  Ever. 

It must be true.  It's on the internet.

I was minding my own business.  Because that’s what I do.  I figured that, being the wee hours of morning, and most folks having worked a full 8 hour day, it would be fairly quiet in the apartment complex that I call home.  I figured wrong.

You should know first that I actually live in a townhome.  This does not mean “a home in a town”, contrary to the definition of a compound word.  It means that my apartment has two stories, and the front door opens up to a walkway that leads to the parking lot where I can park my car right in front.  I like it. 

So I opened my front door to enjoy a smoke outside, alone, missing my Thinking Throne.  Only, I wasn’t alone.  My cutie pie next door neighbor that waves to me every morning and every evening was standing with his buddy right next to my car.  I immediately did a quick assessment of my appearance, it WAS 3am after all.  It’s quite possible that I had yesterday’s makeup smeared like war paint down the left half of my face and didn’t know it.  Anything can happen at 3am.

But then he turned around and spoke.

Next Door Neighbor: “OH! You’re my neighbor.  I know you.  You’re my neighbor.”

Me: “Yes, I am…”

And then I noticed the steady, constant stream of urine hitting the sidewalk. 

I couldn’t light my cigarette.  I could only stand there and stare.

Stare at this man who, as charming and good-looking as he is in the daylight, is apparently a lush when the sun goes down.  This man who, decided that MY CAR resembled a Port-A-Potty.  This man who was currently waving and grinning like an idiot, pissing all over the sidewalk as he faced me.  The only reason I don’t know the exact measurement of his junk is because it was dark.  I admit, I was slightly disappointed by this fact.

Meanwhile, Lush Neighbor’s buddy decided that he didn’t want to be a party to the spectacle, and bolted like a whore on raid night.  Great friend, that one.  Left Lush Neighbor standing there alone in all his glory.  Good thing Lush Neighbor was too drunk to remember any of this in the future.  I, on the other hand, will remember it FOR. EVER.  Just to be clear.

There was some unintelligible slurred muttering and a bit of shuffling towards his own front door, so I deduced it was safe enough to light my smoke.  He’d disappeared into the apartment but left the front door open, and I was roughly half finished smoking when all hell broke loose.  In the span of 10 seconds, a dog inside his apartment went batshit, everyone else inside his apartment started screaming, a mushroom cloud of baking soda exploded into the front yard, and someone screamed, “OH MY GOD, IT’S LIKE 9/11 IN HERE.” 

And then there’s me, minding my own business.

Here’s what really happened.

Lush neighbor got back inside and got himself a craving for Chef Boyardee’s Canned Ravioli.  So he opens up a can and sticks it on the stove.  Only, he’s borderline blackout drunk, so you can imagine how that went.  The ravioli caught fire, and Lush Neighbor grabbed the fire extinguisher.  The dog caught it full in the face, first.  Then the kitchen was coated.  That’s when everyone else inside started screaming.  The cloud of baking soda was SO THICK, it was impossible to see through it.  That’s when the 9/11 comment came into play.  Bad form, but still quite hilarious.

As with all drunkards, once the air settled for about 30 seconds and everyone realized they were in no immediate danger, it turned into a game.  A game called, Let’s See Just How Much Shit Is Inside This Fire Extinguisher, And How Many Surfaces Can We Get It On.  Before long, everything outside was covered in a thin layer of white powder and some drunk chick was laughing at herself because it was “the first time I’ve ever been extinguished!”  A milestone, surely.

So it’s been a week.  All the baking soda has been washed away by the rain, and with it the heady aroma of alcohol infused urine all over my sidewalk, but apparently it takes longer than that for The Scarlet Letter of Shame to wash away.  I haven’t seen Lush Neighbor again since that night. 

But I do wish that he’d show himself so that I can explain to him that he really has nothing to worry about  from  me.  I’ve seen much worse.  You guys know this.  But now I don’t have to blush every time he smiles and waves because the power has shifted.  It’s no longer the hot sexy utility worker that controls the flirtations.  The power has shifted to the chubby divorcee next door that is slowly remembering who she is. 

Power has a tendency to do that once the sidewalk has been pissed on.